Montreval
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Montreval
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Above Manda Cove, the Calanera Coast
Four terraces cut into the cliff, and a staircase of two hundred and eleven steps down to the sea.
41 rooms and suites — From €690 a night
The house sits on four terraces of a working lemon farm, ninety metres above the water. It was a convent until 1911, a farm until 2006, and has been ours since 2009. The rebuilding took three years, most of which was spent on the terraces themselves — a cliff that has been held up by dry stone for four hundred years does not take kindly to concrete.
Rooms are stepped so that no room overlooks another and every one of the forty-one has a private outdoor space of some kind: a loggia, a terrace, or a walled garden with a lemon tree in it. The public rooms are on the second terrace, the pool on the third, and the sea at the bottom of a staircase of two hundred and eleven steps. There is a lift for the first hundred and forty. The last seventy-one are yours.
Two hundred and forty trees, most of them older than the building. They are farmed by the Rasetti family, who farmed them before we arrived and will farm them after we are gone. The kitchen takes what it needs; the rest goes to the co-operative at Manda, as it always has.
The cove below the house is ours in practice but not in law, which is the correct arrangement. There is a small stone jetty, a boatman, and a flat-bottomed launch that will take you into the caves at Vinca when the sea allows. Nino decides. Nino has always decided.
Arrival
The house
Montreval CalaneraStrada di Manda 2Calanera 5040Reservations for every house are taken centrally on +44 20 7946 0139.
Who runs it
Matteo Sarnelli
Director, Montreval Calanera
What is here
Suites & villas
Room — 28 m²
Lime plaster, a stone floor kept cool through August, and a loggia with a lemon tree in a pot older than the room.
From €690 a night, for 2
Suite — 74 m²
The old lemon house on the fourth terrace, with a walled garden, a plunge pool and two hundred and forty trees for a neighbour.
From €1,620 a night, for 4
The table
There is no Sérène at this house — treatment rooms, yes, but we would rather say so than call two rooms a spa. The nearest is at one of the other four houses.
A guest letter
“We were told at booking that the sea would be cold in early June and it was. I have never had a hotel try to talk me out of anything before.”
Peter Anselm, Aubris
Four nights in a Cliff Room, June
Elsewhere
Lake Verane, the Verane Valley
The first house. A farmhouse, a boathouse and a long wall of glass facing the water.
38 rooms and suites — From €780 a night
Aubris village, the Aubris Downs
A vineyard house with twenty-two rooms, a working cellar and a very good baker.
22 rooms and suites — From €640 a night
Below the escarpment, the Sabaia Sands
Twenty-nine tented suites, one fire, and no light after ten except the sky.
29 tented suites — From €1,150 a night
Reservations
Our own team answers, not an agency. Rates fall on the fourth night and again on the seventh, which tells you what we would prefer.
